Mondo’s Development Cooperation Projects

Mondo’s development cooperation projects started in 2009 with the education allowance program and sister school project in North Ghana’s Kongo village. In 2010, these activities expanded to Kenya’s Shianda village. Today, Mondo also develops social entrepreneurship for people with disabilities in Kampala, the capital of Uganda; supports girls’ education and women’s welfare in Northern and Eastern Afghanistan; improves accessibility and quality of school education in the Shan State of Burma.

The main target groups of NGO Mondo’s development cooperation are deprived children and orphans, widowed women and people with disabilities. The main courses of action include education, healthcare, and improving the economic welfare of our target groups. Until 2013 we financed our activities mainly with help from private donors, but during the last two years we have also received funds to improve the education and welfare in Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda from the development cooperation resources of Estonia. One of the most important ways we fulfil our development cooperation projects is sending speciality experts from Estonia to the target countries of Mondo.

Educating children and raising the quality of the given education

For the sixth year in a row, Mondo mediates donations from private donors to where help is needed, and this gives orphans and other children in extremely difficult economic situation to acquire primary education. Thanks to financial aid from the support program of Mondo, in 2015, 125 children from the Nabdam district of northern Ghana, and 95 children from the Shianda village of western Kenya got to go to primary school. Every student has a supporter in Estonia, who pays for the child’s school tuition, school uniform, and other school supplies, and who can be in correspondence with the child, follow her/his progress and development during the school years, should the supporter wish to do so. In addition to supporting primary school students, we also support children who attend secondary, or vocational schools. This is done through the Mondo Brilliant Fund, into which private donors, schools, and entrepreneurs make donations. In the 2015/2016 school year, 23 Ghanaian high school students went to school with financial aid from the Brilliant Fund. In 2015, 19 Kenyan students went to high school with financial aid from the Brilliant Fund. We also support students from Myanmar through the fund. You can read more about all the sponsored children of Mondo Brilliant Fund here.

Increasing the economic freedom of women and people with disabilities

With aid from Mondo, the Nongtaaba Sheabutter Processors production centre was established in the Kongo village of northern Ghana, which provides a place for work for up to 50 women at a time. Our shea butter, being very valued in the cosmetics industry, has an export certificate, and 200-300 village women are willing and able to work within the association. Mondo has also participated in establishing the Wefoco Multipurpose Co-operative Ltd. agricultural association. More specifically, Mondo contributed by buying solar powered incubators for five units of the association. The association, having 140 members, currently works in the field of poultry farming, and by remarkably quickly increasing its income, it plans on developing into a local cooperative credit union by increasing its membership size. With the help of Mondo, more than three hundred women from the Shianda village in western Kenya have had trainings and courses on dairy, and poultry farming, and also on corn production. The same amount of widows in the Kongo village of northern Ghana have gotten themselves a goat, which can be considered their savings account during tough times, when money is needed for buying medications or sending their kids to school. In the production centre of the Bluesky boarding school near Kampala, graduates can apply their artisan skills by making wickerworks from banana leaves, hand-made greeting cards, etc.

Using volunteering experts in development cooperation

During the years 2014 and 2015, Mondo sent 18 Estonian volunteering experts to its countries of destination. Sending out volunteering experts has become one of the main fields of activity for Mondo, and during the next five years, this will complement Mondo’s development cooperation in its countries of destination. Due to impact assessment, Mondo focuses on concrete fields of action in each destination country: in Ghana it is supporting and developing education and medicine, in Myanmar it is supporting and developing education, in Uganda it is enhancing the welfare of people with disabilities, and in Kenya it is bettering women’s livelihoods, and supporting education.

In 2015

220 Children

went to middle school in Ghana and Kenya with help from Estonians

The Nongtaaba shea butter factory gives

200–300 Ghanaian women

a chance to earn an income

Uudised

The Foreign Ministry is supporting Bost Hospital, the central hospital of Helmand province in Afghanistan, in the acquisition of medical supplies with 2,943,213 kroons (188,000 EUR). The sum was allocated from the Foreign Ministry’s budget for development and humanitarian aid.